Boxoffice-December.20.1952

Exhibitors Talk Tax Repeal at Decatur, Ala., Meeting
^
MEET ON FEDKH AL TAX lUI'EAI^Exhibitors from the eighth
concessional district of Alabama met at the Lions hotel in Decatur
recently to discuss the possible repeal of the federal 20 per cent
amusement tax w\i\i Congressman Bob Jones. Shown above, seated,
left to right: C. A. Crute, Lyric, Huntsville; F. H. Thomas, Lyric,
HunUsviUe; D. VV. Davis, chairman of the tax repeal committee,
Norwood and Joy Lan theatres, Florence; Congressman Jones, and
Jack >L Heffelman, Princess, Huntsville. Standing: A. W. Hammond,
Wilson Drive-In, Florence; Mrs. Margie Robinson, Bama, Town
Creek; H. S. Snow, representing operators Local 547, Florence;
Darwin D. Davis, Norwood and Joy Lan, Florence; L. P. Howard,
Keith, Lexington; Khett Woody, Wood Drive-In, Hunts\'Ule; R. D.
Word, Word, Scottsboro; Fred Raney, Hatfield Drive-In, Athens;
Robert N. Cannon, representing Muscle Shoals Theatres in Florence,
Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Athens; H. R. Mitchell, Ranch Drive-In,
Hartsellc; Cullen B. Goss, Wilson Drive-In, Florence; A. C. Austin,
Fox and Starlite Drive-In, Ardmore, Tenn.-Ala., and Lee Pritchett,
Grand, Huntsville. Those present at the meeting, but not shown
in the photo, were Mrs. Clark Hodgins, Star, Moulton, and James Vf.
Robinson, Bama, Town Creek.
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Atlanta Censorship
Held Easy on Films
ATLANTA—Despite the fuss that rises
occasionally when a whole motion picture is
banned here, Mis.s Christine Smith, the city
censor holds that the monitoring is far from
being as rigid as many persons appear to
think.
Atlanta censorship is 29 years old, but the
activity now is carried on under a 1944
ordinance outlawing any motion picture "unfavorable
to the peace, health, morals and
good order of the city."
Figuring out what that language means is
left largely to Miss Smith, no small task in
itself. She sees an average of 22 pictures a
month, or about 265 a year. A lot of them
are poor quality, she claims.
"Films most frequently banned are horror
and crime films; second are those which deal
in obscenity, and third, are those which
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breach the accepted southern taste on race
relations." Miss Smith says.
Permanently on the black list—and for
that reason seldom sent here by distributors
—are sex hygiene films.
Miss Smith has received sharp criticism
locally and nationally on the fairly infrequent
occasions when she has ruled out showings
of controversial films here. She contends
the number is small. Two have been banned
this year out of 253 brought here for showing.
The average each year during the past four
years is five, and scissoring negligible.
Miss Smith admits, of course, that distributors
no longer make pictures like in the older
days. "Most Hollywood films," she says, "perhaps
strangely, get by censors today because
the well-known Johnston office does its job
weil.
Foreign films, produced for audiences with
tastes different from those of Americans, get
the pinch oftener, as do American films produced
outside the production code. She was
criticized for banning "Lost Boundaries."
which used the race issue in a manner controversial
to southerners.
"Actually," she says, "Atlanta is far more
liberal in censoring movies involving race
relations than are most other southern cities."
Some of the philosophy behind Atlanta censorship
comes from Aubrey Milam, a member
of the appeals board which can, and on a
few occasions has, overruled Miss Smith's
decisions.
Film censorship began haphazardly here
in 1923, but Milam was largely responsible
for the 1944 law which gave sounder organizations
and definition of censorship functions.
"The principle, as I see it, is basically the
same as the right of a board of education to
determine which textbooks best present a
given subject in education," Milam says.
Indonesian Says Our Films
Don't Reflect U.S. Life
MIAMI—American motion pictures are the
biggest weapon the Communists have in
Indonesia, one of that nation's leading educators
laid here recently. Hadji Abdul MaUk
affairs
Karim Amrullah, adviser on religious
to the minister of education, added that
movies could be used to promote Indonesian
understanding of the west if they reflected
a true picture of American life.
In the United .States to study the freedom
of worship here. Hamka, as he is known, said
he was surprised to find that Americans are a
truly religious people and that everyone is
not either a "Wall Street banker, gangster,
cowboy or movie star."
A Moslem himself, Hamka has visited
Quaker, Methodist. Mormon and Unitarian
families during his three-month stay in this
country. He said he found, to his surprise,
that they lived their Clu-istianity in their
daily lives as well as on Sunday.
Indonesians, 85 per cent of whom are Moslems,
13 per cent Christian and 2 per cent
Hindu, are very religious, he said, and resist
Communism on a spiritual level. But on the
economic level. Hamka warned, the Communists
are able to appeal with their false
promi.ses to the masses of people living in
poverty.
He warned that filmmakers are not only
playing into Communist hands, but that they
will lose their market to the Italian and
other European films unles.s they reflect more
of the true spiritual life of America.
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